Oral Health Improvement Team

Raising the profile of the team

NES Dental Directorate – Priority Groups Team

Leading through sustainable educational solutions and working collaboratively with key partners to reduce inequalities and improve oral health for Priority Groups.

The original scope of the work stream in supporting the delivery of ‘Childsmile’, by providing education and training to up skill those involved, has evolved and expanded substantially as other national oral health initiatives aimed at different priority groups have been introduced. Educational support for these initiatives, linked to Scottish Government strategy and most recently the Oral Health Improvement Plan (2018) is provided by the Priority Groups team.

The i-matter reports, related discussions and storyboard have helped to focus the team on recognising what we do well e.g. work well and collaboratively with key partners both within NES and externally to enhance the educational support aimed at improving the oral health of those in Priority Groups.

One area which we recognised for improvement was to raise the profile of the Priority Groups work stream and aim to increase knowledge and awareness of the team’s activities, both within the NES organisation and externally. This has been done by maximising opportunities to showcase the team's work and making full use of communication and media opportunities wherever possible. Also, by widening invitations for our educational events and reaching out to those outside health in social care and third sector, many useful connections have been made which have opened new avenues of opportunity. We are always looking at new ways to network with key partners and would like to make more use of digital and social media in the future.

Another area of improvement was to support staff in their own development to maximise their effectiveness in educational delivery and facilitate joint working within the team. The action plan here included agreeing ‘protected team development time’ for staff to share their commitment to team progress, shared learning and performance. The team have demonstrated a proactive attitude to making change and already this has resulted in the creation of flexible and adaptive educational solutions which have helped reduce barriers to accessing learning. To progress this further, we also plan to make use of the 'Developing others for success' NES team management toolkit at the dedicated ‘protected team development time’.